Raw intelligence on the causes of cancer

In its “war against terror,” the U.S. could have the best intelligence possible on Al Qaeda, but if speedy action speedy action didn't follow, it would be useless. That’s the analogy Dr. Dan Durocher uses to describe his research into cancer at Mount Sinai Hospital.

In its “war against terror,” the U.S. could have the best intelligence possible on Al Qaeda, but if speedy action speedy action didn't follow, it would be useless. That’s the analogy Dr. Dan Durocher uses to describe his research into cancer at Mount Sinai Hospital.

Durocher is investigating DNA repair mechanisms and how damage to our genetic material can cause cancer.

“I’m like the CIA of the war on cancer,” he says. “I provide the intelligence, but someone has to act on it.”

Durocher, 39, was a co-winner, last year, of the Canadian Cancer Society’s Young Investigator Prize, and is one of Canada’s Top 40 Under 40, a national program started in 1995 to honour “outstanding leaders in their chosen field.”

He’s working in one of the hottest new areas in cancer research. In the next five years, he believes, “we’re going to see an explosion of information. The knowledge is moving amazingly fast, accelerating.”

Perhaps too fast for the red tape that obstructs the path from laboratory to bedside to be cleared away.

“One big challenge is, how do we translate the advances into something concrete for people?” Durocher says. “We’re going to have to find ways for the scientific, clinical and regulatory levels to keep pace with one another.”

He calls regulation “a 1950s or ’60s infrastructure trying to keep up with 21st century science.

“We have promising drugs that won’t make it, because what is asked for by the regulatory bodies can’t be met.

“For sure, you want safety. With a cancer drug, you normally test it on people who are failing on other drugs. But are these the best subjects? They’re sick, they have organ failure.”

Toronto, he says, occupies “a very prominent place in the world of life-science research. We have a lot of people who are not afraid to adopt innovations.”

Durocher leads a team of about 15 people and is visibly excited by their work. He’s anxious to put it into words a layperson can understand.

“The big question is primarily fundamental cancer biology and how a cancer cell is different from a normal cell and how a normal cell can become a cancer cell.

“Cancer is a disease of the genes. The chromosomes have mutations and rearrangements. The structure is disturbed. How do cells normally prevent this? How do they prevent damage to their chromosomes?”

The human body’s instinct is to heal itself. Cells have “this amazing ability to detect and repair damage,” Durocher says. “Sometimes you look at this and you’re in awe of how it works. It’s very elegant….”

But sometimes it fails. Researchers are impatient to figure out why and what can be done.

“We have millions and millions of cells in our body,” he says. “In each cell, we have 3 billion basic units of DNA. Every cell gets damaged thousands of times a day. The capacity for repair is mind-boggling. In cancer, this fails sometimes.”

He calls cancer “a terrifying beast because it’s lost its DNA repair mechanism and what happens is a kind of accelerated evolution. It can adapt to treatment and to the environment. It’s not natural for, say, a breast-cancer cell to live in the bone, but it happens. The cancer metastasizes [spreads to other organs].

“A lot of cancer tumors respond well at first, but acquire resistance.

“We need to understand how tumors evolve.”

He and his team are making steady advances. For example, they’ve discovered a gene that helps guide a protein that repairs DNA damage but, when mutated, causes breast cancer. The gene, by guiding the protein to damaged DNA, helps ensure that repairs can be made.

It’s a leap forward in breast-cancer research and in finding potential new treatments.

“The next step. . . every discovery leads to more questions,” Durocher says. “Finding out how genes work and help genome stability. Also, is there anything translatable…. Can we use this knowledge to develop cancer therapies?

“We’re finding answers. The next generation of gene-sequencing will revolutionize what I do. It’s wonderful to see this moving forward.”

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